They say wars were won on the playing fields of Eton and now the London Olympics had been rescued on its rowing lake.

After the golds for the women’s pair and for Wiggins in the men’s individual time trial, the nation could breathe a sigh of relief.

Wednesday was the day when we knew for sure that everything was going to be all right.

Wednesday was the day when we stopped worrying about our Games and began to celebrate them in earnest.

Those gold medals were a validation really, the final confirmation we needed that we had created something of which to be proud.

By then, home triumphs were the only missing piece of the jigsaw. Everything else had gone beautifully.

There has been something glorious and heady about it, something that has taken us by surprise.

So this is what it feels like to be at the centre of the world. This is what it feels like to throw a party when everybody came.

Party on the world stage: All eyes are on London, with around a billion people watching the opening ceremony spectacular (Image: Reuters)

London is a melting pot anyway, a city where you are just as likely to hear a foreign language on the street as English, no matter where you live.

But still, there has been something intoxicating about the influx of visitors these past seven days.

There has been a thrill about getting on the Tube and finding yourself next to the US women’s water polo team.

There has been a glorious novelty about seeing Chinese tourists able to wander down the middle of Piccadilly on a Saturday afternoon because it had been closed for the cycling road race.

It has felt like a kinder, gentler London, a city to be proud of, a city where people want to help.

For those of us who were sceptical they would even be ready in time for the Games, the Javelin trains ferrying spectators from St Pancras Station to the Olympic Park in six minutes feel like one of the seven wonders of the world.

The thousands of volunteers all over the capital have been uniformly friendly, resolutely cheerful and desperate to help.

The armed forces have won our gratitude for stepping into the security breech left by the G4S fiasco.

Everyone has pulled together. Maybe it won’t last for long after the games but it feels as if a national healing is taking place.

It feels good to be the world’s hosts. It feels good that every way you turn there is a party or a function, that everyone is getting a piece of the celebration.

The Qataris, for instance, have taken over a building on the Embankment and draped their flag over it.

On Tuesday night, the great American sprinter and long jumper Carl Lewis was there, taking questions about his career.

He stood outside on the balcony for a while, gazing out over the Thames and the lights dancing over its bridges and the Royal Festival Hall on the South Bank.

Join the fun: The Queen started the trend for getting everyone involved in the Olympics by taking part in a James Bond sketch for the opening ceremony (Image: BBC)

That is one of the things that has already made our Olympics feel so special; the sense that everyone is joining in.

It is hard to think of any other event that could have this kind of transformative effect on a city.

What else could bring people together like this, entrancing young and old, the royal family and the ordinary man and woman?

The football World Cup would come close but that is just one sport, played by men whose wages, behaviour and lifestyles have come to divide public opinion.

Of course the Olympic movement has faults. It is in thrall to sponsors every bit as much as football is.

And if there has been one negative aspect of the Games so far, it has been that there have been so many empty seats at so many venues when so many fans are desperate to watch events and cannot get in.

Proud: The Olympics have brought fans together in celebration of sport and London (Image: Julian Finney / Getty)

But the Olympics remain a unifying force and that has been beautifully evident already in London.

It is something about the breadth of the stories and the disciplines and the arenas of combat it encompasses.

There is a fierce beauty about some of the venues, the way the spectators could look down on the sweep of the Thames from Greenwich Park during the equestrian events.

The way the road races finished on The Mall in front of Buckingham Palace, the beautiful Horseguards Parade backdrop to the beach volleyball arena.

There was a compelling magic, too, about the women’s road race on Sunday and the intensity of the battle waged by the three leading riders including Britain’s Lizzie Armitstead, who won a silver medal.